


A Slow Connection

by GeckoGirl89



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Community: comment_fic, Doomed Relationship, Episode: s05e12 You're Welcome, F/M, Ficlet, Heavy Angst, Introspection, Mentions of Past Angel/Buffy and Cordy/Groo, POV Angel (BtVS)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11667852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeckoGirl89/pseuds/GeckoGirl89
Summary: It turns out that all of the caution in the world won't keep Angel from feeling like someone just clawed his heart out of his chest.





	A Slow Connection

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on comment-fic: "any Whedonverse. any. a slow connection" http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/833058.html?thread=104382498#t104382498

This connection between him and Cordelia creeps up on Angel, slowly. So slowly, like continental drift, that even Angel, as ancient and familiar with these patterns as he is, doesn't recognize what it truly is for the longest time.

It's so different than how it had been with Buffy, that initial flash of recognition followed by the passionate yearning and failed attempts to resist it. At first, Cordelia was nothing more than an acquaintance to him. Then, after saving her in L.A. from Russell Winters, he gave her a place in his detective agency and his life. She became his coworker, and gradually his friend and confidant. Eventually, he claimed the title of family for them. Slowly, at a glacial pace, their relationship evolves into... something else.

For so long, Angel can't name what it is. Eventually, that confusion melts away into steadfast internal denial, because the first lesson Angel learned from the doomed saga of him and Buffy was that he couldn't have a normal relationship with a woman if he was in love with her. So he tried, vainly, to convince himself he wasn't in love with Cordelia. But then other people around Angel started to notice, and that denial had been spoken aloud. And, once it was, the weak, false nature of it had become crystallized to Angel. He hadn't been able to look Fred in the eyes when he told her that Cordelia was just a friend, a co-worker, to him.

But even after all of that struggle to acknowledge it to himself, Angel hadn't been able to do anything about it. Angel had been terrified of saying or doing too much and worried that the wrong, hasty action would send her running for the hills. Angel didn't think he would be able to survive losing her. And then things got in the way, relatively small obstacles like the Groosalugg and then the bigger things like Jasmine that Angel could have never imagined.

And now that she's miraculously back out of her coma, Angel thinks he should approach Cordy slowly, delicately. After the wreckage caused by Jasmine and the complications caused by his deal with Wolfram and Hart, they will need that time simply to rebuild what they had before.

But time isn't in the cards for them, as Cordelia explains vaguely that she can't stay with him. It turns out that all of the caution in the world won't keep Angel from feeling like someone just clawed his heart out of his chest.

He tells her that he needs her here, and it's only half a plea. The other half of it is the unvarnished truth he shared yesterday, when he admitted that he was lost without her and that he did wonder about that "what if" of her not ascending all the time. Her eyes are watery and she's touching his cheek, and Angel wishes that time would just freeze right now, before she's gone.

Cordy gives him a weak little smile, says "I'll be seeing you," and starts to walk away. Angel wants the tape to rewind. He's not sure how he can watch her disappear.

But suddenly, she turns and rushes back toward him. And finally, after years of excruciating slow build up, they're finally kissing. Angel closes his eyes and pretends for just a few seconds that the end isn't approaching.

The distant ringing of a telephone breaks their connection, but Angel doesn't want to leave, not yet. Not ever, really. Cordy fixes his collar and tells him to go get the phone.

And in that moment, out of Angel's sight, Cordy vanishes into the ether, gone forever.


End file.
